The story of the first decade in Imperial Valley, California

Front matter

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Part One

When Columbus, standing in the court of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, pleaded for money with which to outfit ships for a voyage of discovery and conquest, there dwelt in the southwestern part of that country he was later instrumental in opening to the old world, a strange people of swarthy skins, in settlements even then very ancient. This people was divided into several tribes: some lived nomadic lives, carrying their tents from place to place, calling themselves Navajoes; some dwelt in burrows in the cliffs and raised corn or hunted and fished on the plains below — a tribe known as Walapais in one place, as Hopis in another; a third group peopled the rich flats on the bank of a great, muddy river that frequently overflowed, enriching and irrigating the land — these were the Yumas.

For many generations these aborigines lived their simple, savage lives, watching the days come and go without interest or speculation. Occasionally, though seldom, indeed, one of their number came to wonder about the countries surrounding their own and wandered off to learn what he could. Some of these did not come back — a fe^ did, bringing tales of strange mountains full of ore, of plains where wild things roamed, or of deserts unpeopled, desolate and forbidding. But at some time very long ago some of these adventurous spirits returned to the Yumas from the west with report of a great inland lake, full of fish, surrounded by rich land, and thither a company of bold spirits went, with their few belongings, to live. Years later a few of these with many of their children returned, saying that the lake had turned too salt to use, that the fish were dying and that the country was baking under a cruel sun that drove the rain clouds away and made the land desolate.

Generations passed, Columbus' mission was performed and the intrepid old Genoese died with a broken heart, white people filled the eastern part of the country, and rumors reached the far-away southwest — the country of the Yumas and the Navajoes — that a dominant race had come to crowd all Indians into the sea. Their first evidence of this was when the missionary fathers crowded across their country to the Pacific, and one of these expeditions ended in a massacre, the father and his followers never having been heard of again. One day it was reported that the boats of the whites were coming up the Colorado — that muddy river on which the Yumas depended for both food and drink — and the frightened tribesmen laid plans for defense. But the invaders never reached the settlements, although they sailed away a few days later believing that they had discovered the mouth of the Colorado river and had sailed up its waters many miles.

The leader of this expedition was Lieutenant H. Hardy, of the Royal Navy of Great Britain, who was exploring the western coasts in a search for some river up which he could sail, as was then thought, well into the great western part of the new continent. This was about the year 1800. Lieutenant Hardy ascended the Gulf of California and made his way with great difficulty past low islands and over shallows and sand bars into the mouth of a sluggish stream. Although puzzled at the narrowness of the river he pushed on to a small lake where he moored ship and went ashore to reconnoitre. From the top of a neighboring butte that rose 300 feet into the air almost from the shores of the lake, he looked north on to a desert stretching as far as the eye could reach — bald and desolate under the straight rays of the sun. The river on which he hoped to sail spread out to the east over great marshes and he saw at once that it would be hopeless to go farther into this slough. Regretfully he turned back, reporting to his superiors across the sea that the Colorado was nonnavigable.

Whether Lietutenant Hardy, who probably looked on the Colorado desert first of all Englishmen, was really in the Colorado or not is a debatable point. He was not in that stream which — up to a few months before this writing — was the Colorado, but on the other hand was in a stream running from Volcano lake to the Gulf of California and which, because he called it the Colorado in his reports and maps, has since been called Hardy's Colorado, or the Hardy. Geographers have thought for almost one hundred years that Hardy was mistaken, but it is not unlikely that he was not and that the reason he could not find another and larger stream was that the Colorado was then, as it is at the present writing, flowing west across the marshes into Rio Paradones, thence into Volcano lake and so to the sea by the Hardy. We are inclined to believe that the laugh, instead of being on Hardy, was on the later geographers, for Hardy climbed Cerro Prieto and from there would have been able to see the real Colorado had it then been flowing to the gulf in the channel it used for many years prior to the spring of 1910.

This Colorado river Lieutenant Hardy desired to explore was worthy of his best efforts. It is one of the long rivers of the world, although robbed of some honors in this regard by the fact that its upper tributaries bear other names. An excellent brief description of the drainage basin of the Colorado is found in Water- Supply paper, Number 211, issued by the United States Geological survey and because this is pointed and accurate it is given. The report was prepared in 1906 by R. L. Meeker and H. S. Reed and concerning the great stream says: **The Colorado River is formed in the southeastern part of Utah by the junction of Gtand and Green rivers. The Green is larger than the Grand and is the upward continuation of the Colorado. Including the Green, the entire length of the Colorado is about 2,000 miles. The region drained is about 800 miles long, varies in width from 300 to 500 miles, and contains about 300,000 square miles. It comprises the southwestern part of Wyoming, the western part of Colorado, the eastern half of Utah, practically all of Arizona and small portions of California, Nevada, New Mexico and Old Mexico. Most of this area is arid, the mean annual rainfall being about 8i inches. The streams receive their supply from the melting snows on the high mountains of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.

"There are two distinct portions of the basin of the Colorado. The lower third is but little above the level of the sea, though here and there ranges of mountains rise to elevations of 2,000 to 6,000 feet. This part of the valley is bounded on the north by a line of cliffs which present a bold, often vertical, step of hundreds or thousands of feet to the table land above. The upper two-thirds of the basin stands from 4,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level, and is bordered on the east, west, and north by ranges of snow-clad mountains which attain altitudes varying from 8,000 to 14,000 feet above sea level. Through this plateau the Colorado and its tributaries have cut narrow gorges or canyons through which they flow at almost inaccessible depths. At points where lateral streams enter, the canyons are broken by narrow transverse valleys, diversified by bordering willows, clumps of box elder, and small groves of cottonwood. The whole upper basin of the Colorado is traversed by a labyrinth of these canyons, most of which are dry during the greater portion of the year, and carry water only during the melting of the snow and the brief period of the autumnal and spring rains

Stations on the old Butterfield Stage Route across the Desert Remained

"Green River heads on the west slope of the Wind river mountains in western Wyoming, its ultimate source being a number of small lakes fed by the glaciers and immense snow deposits always to be found on Fremont and neighboring peaks. For perhaps 25 miles the river flows northwestward through the mountains. It then turns abruptly and runs in a general southerly direction across western Wyoming into Utah. A few miles below the Wyoming-Utah boundary another sharp turn carries the river eastward along the Uinta Mountains, through which it breaks near the east end of the range. It then flows southward in Colorado for about 25 miles, turns back into Utah, and continues to flow in a southwesterly and southerly direction until it unites with the Grand to form the Colorado. Its length, measured roughly along the course, is approximately 425 miles.''

Rising on the western slopes of the Rocky mountains among the high peaks of the Front Range, the Grand river (with its tributaries) drains "an area comprising approximately 26, 180 square miles .... On the east and southeast the basin is limited by the high ranges of the Continental Divide which separate it from the basins of the Platte and Arkansas rivers; on the north by the White river and Book Cliffs plateaus; on the west by the canyon district of the Colorado.'^

It is necessary, for the purposes of our story, to consider also another tributarial basin — that of the Gila and Salt Rivers in the southwest. Of these the paper says: "Gila river rises in western and southwestern New Mexico, receiving its waters from mountains having an elevation of from 7,000 to 8,000 feet. At the point where it crosses into Arizona it has an elevation of 6,000 feet. From this place it flows between mountain ranges, falling rapidly, until at Florence, 180 miles away, it is about 1,500 feet above sea level. At a point about 16 miles above Florence the river emerges upon the plain through which it winds for about 75 miles before receiving the waters of its principal tributary, the Salt. . . . Salt River, though considered a tributary of the Gila, is in fact, larger both in catchment area and in discharge. It receives the drainage from central Arizona, its principal tributary, the Verde, flowing southeasterly and south from the mountains and table-lands south of Colorado river. The Verde valley is situated in Yavapai county, Arizona, on the head waters of the stream, and extends from a canyon above Camp Verde to a point about 10 miles below the fort. About a mile above the junction of the Verde and 30 miles above Phoenix the Salt enters upon the plains of the Gila Valley."

Here then are the districts from which flow the waters that go to make up that powerful, sluggish, and erratic river. Here are described those regions from which the Colorado has annually carried off drainage waters, with their dissolved atoms of earth, for centuries. Here are named the canons that have been formed by the eating away of their substance by this eroding stream. When one considers that all the earth removed from such gorges as the canons of the Colorado, Green, Salt and Gila, instead of being swept away and lost, has a definite destination, then one begins to realize the enormous importance that the river must have played in the course of its ages of work, in the making of geography. Where did the silt carried away through the medium of these streams find a resting place? Where today is the mass of earth, rock, disintegrated granite, the vegetable matter, the salt, the mineral that has for ages been drawn into its torrential bosom at flood time by the voracious Colorado and swept downward toward the ocean?

Organic matter in solution or in suspension is not deposited by water moving rapidly. In other words silt is not cast up by a stream the actions of which are, in the very nature of things, erosive. It remains only where there is a pause in the hurry of the waters and it may settle gradually to the bottom or float in infinitely small particles to some quiet bank where there is a scarcely perceptible flow. The silt swept down stream by the Colorado must have been carried until it reached a point where the river, spreading out in a shallow channel and flowing slowly and evenly, became a settling basin for its cargo.

This point was not reached by the Colorado until its waters poured into the sea — into that arm of the Pacific known as the Gulf of California. And how the river here discharged its burden is an absorbing and marvelous story — the story of the formation of the Colorado desert, now reclaimed and known to all who read this account as the Imperial Valley, daughter of the Colorado river, since she give it birth and nourishes it today.

Concerning the geology of this section of the Southwest very little data has been compiled. As early as 1853 Prof. William P. Blake, accompanying a military expedition sent out to report on the feasibility of railroad construction from the Mississippi river to the Pacific Ocean, passed through the upper end of the desert and, in an exhaustive and interesting resume of his findings,* threw some light on the geology of this part of arid America. A later investigator, Walter C. Mendenhall, an expert in the United States Geological Survey, devotes several pages of his report — "Ground Waters of the Indio Region'' (U. S. Geol. Survey Water-supply Paper No. 225 ) to a discussion of the formation of the Salton Sink. After a description of the surrounding mountains he turns to the desert with the following conclusions concerning the latter:

**It may be said ... as a generalization, that it belongs to a type which physiographers describe as constructional, that is, it represents an area which has been depressed as a result of crust al movement, as contrasted with valleys due to erosion.

There are many proofs of this. The fact that its rock floor (bed-rock) is below tide, even in those parts north of the Gulf where the actual surface is well above sea-level, proves that a part, at least, of its position is due to actual subsidence of a block of the earth's crust, because erosive action cannot extend below the ultimate base-level, which is usually sea-level."

The writer finds further proof in the discovery of a marked fault line in the mountains, showing conclusively, he thinks, that the valley below dropped away at one time. He says: "The Santa Rosa ridge itself is a particularly suggestive mountain mass. It has a steep, abrupt southwest face, with short drainage lines, and a relatively smooth and sloping northeast face, with long drainage lines. On its northeast face there are many large surfaces, comparatively unscarred by modern arroyos, which at once suggests remnants of an old eroded surface. In short it has the typographic characteristics of a faulted block tilted toward the northeast and plunging into the desert toward the southeast . . . One of the most extensive faults in California runs southeastward through the Coast ranges north of the San Gabriel mountains, through Cajon pass, south of the San Bernardino range and through San Gorgonio pass into the Colorado desert. Here it is no longer traceable; but since, if projected, it would follow closely the axis of the desert valley, through the Salton Sink and southeastward toward the Gulf it may well be, even here, one of the lines of weakness that has helped determine the position of the depression. As the entire basin is occupied by lake silts and alluvium of most recent origin it is evident that, unless movement had taken place along this fault at a very late date, there would be no surface indication of it. Phenomena like the obsidian buttes, (glass-like volcanic excrescences) 6 or 8 miles southwest of Imperial Junction and the group of solfataras (mudvolcanoes emitting sulphureous gases ) seen there until submerged by the waters of Salton sea, may well be associated with a profound fracture of this nature. The other group of solfataras, 35 or 40 miles southeast of Calexico, near the base of the Cerro Prieto in Mexico, is distributed for two or three miles along a northeastsouthwest line parallel to the structures in the mountain ranges to the west. All of this evidence, taken together, indicates strongly that the desert valley is associated with structures in which faults are prominent, and leads logically to the conclusion that the desert is a constructional depression due to the marked and probably irregular subsidence of a number of faulted strips.''

Concerning the geological period during which these phenomena probably occurred Mr. Mendenhall says: *The conclusions are . . . that at least a part of this movement has taken place since the Tertiary rocks were deposited — fossils prove the presence of Miocene beds, and clearly later rocks are probably Pliocene — and as associated solfataric phenomena and the derived land forms are so well preserved, it is likely that much of the movement is late Pliocene or Pleistocene."

This subsidence of the floor of the valley must have been followed at once by an inrush of the waters of the Gulf of California. Authorities agree that, at a period comparatively recent from the geologist's point of view, the placid waters of the Pacific covered this section, and, although its northwestern limits cannot be located definitely today, it is probable the tide-waters lapped the sands at the base, or very near the base, of San Jacinto mountain.

It was into this water that the Colorado found its way in ages past. It must be remembered again that the rivers making up the Colorado and that stream itself flow rapidly until the waters

The Christian Church in Imperial was the First Frame Building in Imperial Valley approach their point of discharge. It was impossible, therefore, for them to lose their heavy charge of silt on their way. This instead was poured into the ocean year after year, until, in the course of many centuries, it had spread out over a considerable area about the bed of the gulf at the point where the rivers debouched.

The formation of a delta can be found described in any school geography: in brief it consists of a gradual growth of land built up from deposited river silts. Although the river goes on flowing steadily its deposits gradually circumscribe its course — in short, the stream forms for itself new banks. In the passing of centuries the Colorado and the Gila built deltas, built new channels, joined their waters and together went on with their work of bringing down to the sea the alluvium of their upper reaches until they had covered, under hundreds of feet of mud, the original floor of the gulf. When this time came the silt began to grow up more and more about the streams themselves, crowding them farther and farther on, growing ever higher and higher, until at length it completed its destiny as a creator and — with a pronounced wall from Pilot Knob on the east to Cerro Prieto on the west — cut the Gulf of California in two.

Though there thus became two distinct bodies of water, one the shortened Gulf of California and the other a great inland sea, the rivers were never through bringing down silt deposits. Compelled by its own efforts to flow southward now the Colorado went on building and in the course of more ages had extended the high ground at its mouth until it flowed in a channel at least 40 feet above sea level at the very point where, in the beginning of its depositing, it had emptied directly into the sea at sea-level. It was now in what Walter C. Mendenhall, the government geologist, has termed ''a condition of unstable equilibrium;" in other words it had reached a condition where a very slight change in its height — as for instance at time of flood — might cause it to over-run its banks and to cut a flood channel in the very ground it had built up itself.

Mr. Mendenhall, who has written a careful digest of these phenomena in the work before referred to, says further: *'By such a process (over-flowing its self-constituted banks ) the Colorado must have discharged alternately into the gulf and into the depression now known as the Salton Sink, meanwhile building up the delta dam that separates them . . . During this process it is highly probable that water filled the Salton depression and evaporated from it many times for it must have quickly disappeared whenever the erratic river changed its course to the gulf, for the run-oflf from the mountains that surrounded the sink is too slight to maintain a permanent water body in this region of intense evaporation."

There is every reason to believe, however, that during these eras of ebb and flow there were periods scores of years in length when the great lake whose surface was 40 feet above sea level and whose surface area Mr. Mendenhall computes at 2,100 square miles, lapped the rocks of the mountains surrounding. In fact it is possible to see today, on the north and west sides of the Valley, many feet above the old beach line, distinct water marks and the encrustations formed as the waves, heavily impregnated with alkaline matter, dashed against the rocks and left on them scales of indurated salts. This lake is first mentioned as a proven certainty by Prof. Blake, whose explorations are referred to above, and, in his report to the National Geographic Society within the last decade, this pioneer in desert geology names the vanished body of water Lake Cahuilla, which name has been adopted for it.

That Lake Cahuilla existed as an entity for many generations is proven by the presence over the whole floor of the desert, of fresh water shells. Shell fish change their habitat by most gradual processes and it is easy to see, from the number and varying size of those found over the desert, that they flourished here for a very long period of time, multiplying, aging and dying, to be replaced by younger generations.

It is plain, then, that as nearly as we can discover, the Colorado Desert was at first no desert at all but a part of that structural mass now surrounding it in the form of mountains; that the presence of faults in this structure caused a distinct subsidence to occur — the floor of the present desert settling probably 1,000 feet and being at once inundated by the waters of the Gulf of California; that this gulf received the silt-laden waters of the Colorado and Gila, with their numerous tributaries until such time as a delta was formed and a wall raised dividing the gulf in twain, and forming Lake Cahuilla, into which poured the fresh waters of the rivers for many centuries, until the surface of this lake was 40 feet above sea level and extended over an area of more than 2,100 square miles; that at last so great a barrier was raised between tide water and the lake that only semi-occasionally did the

Colorado overflow into Lake Cahuilla and then only for comparatively short periods — so short, in fact, that evaporation gradually lowered the surface, foot by foot, until it was at sea level and then, foot by foot, until the brackish inland sea, washing its bed more or less thoroughly as it receded — rocked by the winds — shrunk away to nothingness, leaving only at its deepest point a great bed of salts, a myriad of fresh water shells, and a soil of rich alluvium and detritus from 250 to 1000 feet in depth. Years passed and man came with his ditches, his dredging and his insufficient experience with the great Mother of the desert — the Colorado river. She must have watched his puerile efforts with amusement for when she chose she swept over his little barriers and for two years gave him battle such as no engineers in the history of man have waged. She partially refilled Lake Cahuilla, this smaller body of water becoming known as "Salton Sea;^' but at last, beaten for the time at least, she turned again toward the gulf, venting her spleen by tearing the lower delta apart and changing her course westward to Volcano Lake and through the channels of Hardy^s Colorado.

CHAPTER I

VALLEY BEFORE SETTLEMENT

Part Two

The Colorado desert throughout historic times must have presented very little to man of interest or profit and yet it has been repeatedly visited, has been written of by many thoughtful and observant men, and has an history quite apart from that of any other section of the Southwest. It was crossed by military parties as early as 1846, was investigated by an eminent geologist and naturalist in 1853, was surveyed by government contractors first in 1855 and 1856, was spanned with a chain of overland stage stations in 1858, was studied with a view to reclamation in the same year, was visited by scientists in the seventies, was partially re-surveyed in 1880, was traversed by the railroad in 1886, was prospected and finally located on as a claim for working its salt beds in the same year, was surveyed with a view to reclaiming it in 1892 again, and was finally touched by the magic hand of the water king in 1902 — since when it has been more in the public prints than probably any irrigated area in the history of the world.

One of the early records of a visit to this desert is found in the report of Topographical Engineer W. H. Emory, U. S. A., published by the government as a Senate document in 1847. In the spring of 1846 the government of the United States was urged by Americans in Southern California, which was then a part of the Mexican territory of Alta California, to send troops to San Diego and Los Angeles to protect them from the insults and the depredations of a semi-organized force of Mexican desperadoes. The nearest post to the Coast was at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the route between the two points was one little traveled and beset with unknown dangei^s and many hardships. However, since complaints from the Southwest were becoming more and more frequent, an order was issued in June, 1846, detaching a column of cavalry troops, under Colonel Phillip

Kearney, and directing them to proceed by the shortest route to San Diego, California. At the special request of the War department supplemental orders were issued sending officers of the engineering department with this expedition for observations of the country, although it was specifically stated that these observations were to be made incidental to the regular duties of an officer of the line. Lieutenant W. H. Emory and two companions were chosen for this duty, which bore little for them save the extreme of hardship and labor. For not only did they have their duties as officers of the detachment, but they were expected to make a comprehensive report on the topography, natural history, and geography of the country through which they were to pass. They must have labored diligently for Emory^s report is full and circumstantial, albeit written, as he says from time to time in the course of his story, under the most trying conditions, usually at night after a hard day's march, and always with data gathered at the expense of much extra trouble.

After describing with much exactness the country traversed from Leavenworth, through the southwest to the Gila river and down that stream to the Colorado, and after telling of the sorry condition in which the troops found themselves after their four four months' march, the writer goes on:

"Nov. 25, 1846. At the ford the Colorado is 1500 feet wide and flows at the rate of a mile and a half per hour, its greatest depth in the channel at the ford where we crossed being four feet. The banks are low — not more than four feet high and, judging from indication, sometimes, though not frequently, overflowed. Its general appearance at this point is not much unlike that of the Arkansas with its turbid waters . . . After crossing \^e ascended the river three-quarters of a mile where we encountered an immense sand drift and from that point until we halted the great highway lies along the foot of this drift which is continually, but slowly, encroaching down the Valley. . . .

"Nov. 23. The dawn of day found every man on horseback and a bunch of grass from the Colorado tied behind him on the cantle of his saddle. After getting well under way the keen air at 26° Fahr. made it most comfortable to walk. We travelled four miles along the sand butte in the same direction as yesterday, about south 75 degrees west (magnetic). We mounted the butte and found after a short distance a firmer footing covered with fragments of lava rounded by water, and many agates. We were now fairly on the desert. Our course now inclined a few degrees more to the north and at ten a. m. we found a large patch of grama (course grass) where we halted for an hour, and then pursued our way over the plains covered with fragments of lava, traversed at intervals by sand dunes, until four p. m. when, after traveling 24 miles, we reached the Alamo or cottonwood. At this point the captured Spaniards (guides carried by the party) informed us that we would find a running stream a few rods to the west, but this was not found. Neither was there any cottonwood at the Alamo, as its name would signify . . . the trees probably having been covered by the encroachments of the sand, which here terminates in a bluff forty feet high making the arc of a great circle convexing to the north."